As numerous people have observed recently, Democracy Is In Crisis. It is no longer working for the common good, but is backsliding to authoritarianism.

Why is this?

We don't have all the answers, but we suspect we have some. The rise of authoritarians fits right in the Thwink.org analysis of the sustainability problem. The analysis went so deep it found four main root causes. It also found a feedback loop structure that explains WHY Trump and other authoritarians have been able to get elected and HOW that can be prevented from happening again, IF the root causes are resolved.

The first film is shown below. Try to watch it with good speakers or headphones because the music score plays a major part in the production. For the rest of the films see The Democracy in Crisis Film Series.

Solving Small Local Social Problems

This project is off and running. It's a Meetup group named The Atlanta Analytical Activists that may give you some ideas for a similar Meetup group of your own.

It's a project based group with a General Plan. The basic idea is to form a core group of activists committed to the goal of helping to move the field of modern activism from Classic Activism to Analytical Activism. First the group forms. Then folks take the training, as described in the Training Plan. Finally they select one or more small local social problems to analyze and solve, using the tools of Analytical Activism, and them attempt to analytically solve the problems.More.

The Voter Feedback Loop

We live in a social universe. The most important feedback loop in that universe is the Voter Feedback Loop. If it's healthy, then a democratic society works to optimize the common good. But if it's not healthy the loop does just the opposite. It works for the uncommon good, for powerful special interests.

Below is the basic Voter Feedback Loop. The annotated version on the right explains how the loop is easily exploited. The most obvious symptom of recent exploitation is the rise to power of Donald Trump, ironically in the nation that invented modern democracy.

The annotated diagram concludes that:

"When winning by telling lies instead of the truth becomes the norm, democracy is in crisis."

Unfortunately, that conclusion applies more than ever to the United States. More.

The 60 Second Elevator Pitch

Here's what Thwink.org is all about:

The global environmental sustainability problem has gone unsolved for over 40 years. During that time millions of dedicated activists, scholars, scientists, and politicians have attempted to solve the problem. But despite this massive effort, the problem continues to grow worse with no credible solution in sight.

WHY is this? WHY has humanity been unable to solve the problem?

Because popular solutions do not resolve root causes. Instead, they attempt to solve what are in fact intermediate causes. Popular solutions are symptomatic solutions. They treat the fever instead of the disease.

We know this to be true because all problems arise from their root causes. If a solution fails, it can only be because it did not resolve one or more of the root causes.

If we want solutions that will work, problem solvers will have to change their approach. They need to switch to these four main steps:

1. Define the problem

2. FIND THE ROOT CAUSES

3. Find solutions to resolve the root causes

4. Implement the solutions

These four steps are what set the Thwink approach apart from conventional approaches, because they omit the crucial second step of find the root causes. That's like a doctor skipping the diagnosis step and guessing at what a good treatment (solution) would be. Would you go to a doctor like that?

Despite the best efforts of millions of dedicated activists, the world's ecological footprint keeps rising. Year after year, decade after decade, it just keeps going up. Every dot on the graph is a major effort to solve the problem. There are thousands of more dots not on the graph. But none have made more than a modest difference. The footprint is now at about 50% overshoot. If this overshoot is not brought down below the one planet limit very soon, collapse is dead ahead. (pun intended)

So what are the world's problem solvers doing wrong? Why are popular solutions failing to solve the sustainability problem?

Because popular solutions are incapable of resolving the root causes.

If you believe this answer is reasonably true or might be true, then Thwink.org has a world of helpful material for you and your organization. Here's how you can get started:

Now, after you've read one of the above items, consider one of the very latest solutions. See the About Us page for Al Gore's Climate Reality Project. The page says:

The Climate Reality Project, founded and chaired by former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore, is dedicated to unleashing a global cultural movement demanding action on the climate crisis. Despite overwhelming international scientific consensus on climate change, the global community still lacks the resolve to implement meaningful solutions. The Climate Reality Project exists to forge an unwavering bedrock of impassioned support necessary for urgent action. With that foundation, together we will ignite the moral courage in our leaders to solve the climate crisis.

The Climate Reality Project employs cutting-edge communications and grassroots engagement tools to break the dam of inaction and raise the profile of the climate crisis to its proper state of urgency. With a global movement more than 5 million strong and a grassroots network of Climate Leaders trained by Chairman Al Gore, we stand up to denial, press for solutions, and spread the truth about climate change to empower our leaders to solve the climate crisis.

If you've grasped what our material says, you will immediately be able to see that the Climate Reality Project's approach is simply not going to work. It's basically a "spread the truth" approach. This is no different from past approaches, all of which have failed. Why? Because "spread the truth" pushes on a low leverage point. It attempts to resolve an intermediate cause (the universal fallacious paradigm of Growth Is Good) rather than the root cause (high political deception effectiveness) of change resistance.

Spin is deception. It's working like a charm, so well that attempts to "spread the truth" have not worked in the past. Nor will they work in the future.

That "the global community still lacks the resolve to implement meaningful solutions" is a symptom of change resistance. Al Gore's project is trying to overcome change resistance. Wouldn't it help if the project promoted solutions that were directed toward resolving the root cause of change resistance? After all, all problems arise from their root causes.

If this makes sense, then see the glossary entry on More of the Truth. That's the solution strategy The Climate Reality Project is using.

Scott Durlacher presented the paper at the Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference in Portland, Oregon, US, on August 1, 2012. Click on the photo to watch the five minute video of Scott covering the highlights of the paper and its context.

How? With the same powerful tool business uses to routinely solve its toughest problems: Root Cause Analysis.

The key conclusion is that popular solutions don't work because they do not resolve root causes. Instead, they attempt (in vain) to resolve intermediate causes, like externalized costs or the universal fallacy that Growth Is Good.

The analysis found four main root causes. Finding these led to discovery that the environmental sustainability problem is itself a symptom of a deeper problem: the Broken Political System Problem. This is the real problem to solve. Until it's solved the work of environmentalists is largely fruitless. This is a highly controversial and counter-intuitive conclusion, but it's well supported by a mountain of analysis, modeling, references, and examples in the publications at Thwink.org.

Using the results of the analysis a solution strategy is presented. Twelve solution elements are required to resolve the four root causes.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

If you know where the bullseye is, your solutions can't miss!

If this makes sense then:

Welcome to Modern Activism

1. Ready - Define the problem.

2. Aim - Analyze the problem with Root Cause Analysis.

3. Fire - Develop and implement solutions that can't miss.

These three steps are why we designed this button:

Solving the sustainability problem is not a matter of doing the same things better. It's a matter of doing something different. Radically different.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.